Goodbye Centennial Hall

This is of interest to only about three people reading this blog, but here be some photos of the Centennial Hall at the Royal Adelaide Showgrounds being demolished. The mister, who knows about such things, tells me that the building has concrete cancer. I noticed the bulldozers there a few days before I went away, but I forgot to go and get the photos before they knocked it down. So, while I am disappointed that I didn’t get the photos before it was completely knocked down, I am so glad that I managed to get even these.

The Show (and it’s just around the corner, folks) will not be the same without this building. It was a small, quiet haven for that time, say around three o’clock, when the mad mouse and the toffee apples got too much. Here is where they had the flower arrangements, the avocado and the apples for your yellow brick road showbag. And the apple juice. I have two glasses of apple juice each year, and of them comes – came – from here. There were too, a couple of those things you will only see at the show. Is this where they had that arrangement of the train tracks you could lay in your garden (front or back)? I think so. I think that was here.

The floorboards of Centennial Hall were the gentle type of town halls everywhere. They absorbed the sound and reflected it back in a much more civilised way than the scratchy carpet squares from the hall they’re using now. And there was music of a most soothing kind. The kind where men dress in black suits and bow ties even in the middle of the day.

And what will exams be without a final panic and cigarette on these steps.

I was the one everyone asked ‘did you study this’ and if I said ‘yes’ and they had not studied that, the colour drained from their faces as they thought to themselves ‘bloody hell, if even she’s done that it will be in there for sure’. I only ever failed one exam. I’m a lazy person with a conscience.

Goodbye Centennial Hall.

PS I’ve got more photos on my flickr page which I think is here, but in my blog, as in life, there are no guarantees. The photos there are much better quality – I have no idea why they come out so poorly on my blog and I don’t know how to copy them from flickr into here. And I guess I’m too lazy to work it out.

7 Comments

Well done in getting any shots at all.
I’m one hell of a procrastinator when it comes to taking shots of soon-to-be-demolished things.
Most recently, I wanted to take a shot of that section of the Bakewell bridge that remained for most of the tunnel work up till a couple of weeks ago. I kept saying, I should come down really early one morning and get the sun rising over the city behind it.
All I could manage was a few snaps from the front seat driving back from IKEA as the demolition started.

Centennial Hall, November 11, 1975: a cloudless blue and gold Adelaide day on which I come boucing out of an English exam in which I think I did rather well, look for the ancient light-blue Ford Anglia (a la Prisoner of Azkaban) driven by my friend Jayne who has come to pick me up, notice that Jayne is looking rather agitated, and get into the car … whose radio is broadcasting the news flash that the Governor-General has dismissed the Prime Minister.

Centennial Hall, November 11, 1975: a cloudless blue and gold Adelaide day on which I come boucing out of an English exam in which I think I did rather well, look for the ancient light-blue Ford Anglia (a la Prisoner of Azkaban) driven by my friend Jayne who has come to pick me up, notice that Jayne is looking rather agitated, and get into the car … whose radio is broadcasting the news flash that the Governor-General has dismissed the Prime Minister.

I know about concrete cancer. The beautiful old Hotel we lived in, looked wonderful from the outside, but was riddles with the cancer, & was pulled down. It broke our son’s heart to think they couldnt save it.

In order to prove you wrong about the number of people interested in Centennial Hall, I thought I ought to comment. I’ve been to the Royal Show on a number of occasions, and I thought it was a pretty good show. Last time was about 10 years ago though, on my (now) ex-mother-in-law’s membership ticket. How are they going to go without it?